Ansible Playbook to copy a file to a remote host - Permission denied - How to send credentials?

I'm trying to copy a file, local, to a remote host using a simple Ansible playbook:

    ---
   - name: Transfer file to remote host device
     hosts: remotehost
     connection: local

     tasks:
          - name: Send file to remote host
            copy:
              src: /home/plc/cert.pfx
              dest: /root/certificates

But I'm getting permission denied. What's the User/Password that's being used when trying to send the file to the remote host? Can I specify it?

Error I'm getting as follow:

fatal: [remotehost]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "Failed to get information on remote file (/root/certificates): Permission denied"}

Solution

Given the destination path is /root/certificates, you must either:

connect as root (not recommended), or
use privilege escalation with become: true.

Your connecting account must be configured to be able to do so — all that is well documented, so learn and apply.

Besides, you have an unnecessary connection: local in your play definition which prevents from connecting to the target server. Remove it.

Considering that, maybe you should start with Getting Started chapter of Ansible documentation.